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"And no one else has a key, sir?" Firth insisted.

"No one else. It is a Yale lock, and there are only two keys for it."

Sergeant Bluett, who had been making notes, glanced up with a puzzled frown. "Was it before or after the bell rang that you heard these shuffling footsteps?"

"Before. I should have ignored them if these sounds had not been followed by that of the bell."

"I see." Bluett scratched his upstanding hair in a manner which suggested that he did not see at all.

"What other servants are there?" Firth asked.

"A woman who acts as cook and who attends daily; otherwise Wake is in sole charge of my small household. Let me epitomise the situation, gentlemen." He glanced with those dreamy eyes from face to face. "I was engaged in a ritualistic experiment the results of which might well have meant the end of that evil which oppresses the world. One corner of the veil, at last, had been lifted. To this moment I had dedicated my life for many years. You see—" he smiled sadly—"I was doomed to be plucked back at the very threshold of Knowledge. Hearing the sounds which I have described, I forced myself from the subconscious back into the conscious, and went out to the lobby. The man—I had never seen him before, but you say he is Sir Giles Loeder—was lying as you found him. The front door was locked. I can tell you nothing more, gentlemen, for this is all I know."